LISSA ALEXANDER
reporter@pqbnews.com
A classical Victoria Symphony concert featuring one of the most sensational young artists to emerge in Canada in the past decade, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is coming to Qualicum Beach March 23.
“He apparently is very exceptional for his age and we’re just lucky to get this concert into Qualicum,” said Eric Charman local patron of the arts.
Charman was talking about Jan Lisiecki, an award winning 18-year-old pianist who has already performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York and for Queen Elizabeth and 10,000 others on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, among other prestigious showings around the world.
In 2010 the Fryderk Chopin Institute released Lisiecki’s live recordings of both Chopin concertos with Sinfonia Varsovia and Howard Shelley, which garnered him the Diapason Decouverte award. Decouverte described him as “an unmannered virtuoso already . . . and above all irresistibly natural playing.”
Lisiecki’s music has been broadcast and he was featured in a CBC National News documentary about his life in 2009 called The Reluctant Prodigy. The rising star will be celebrating his 19th birthday on the day of the Qualicum Beach concert where he’ll play Chopin Piano Concerto.
The concert will also feature conductor Tania Miller and one of the greatest Mozart Symphonies, Charman said, Symphony Number 41, The Jupiter.
The sponsors for the show are Quality Foods, Dairyland and RBC Royal Bank Group, and Charman said the show couldn’t go on without them.
Tickets go on sale at Mulberry Bush Bookstores Feb. 22 and are $25 if bought before March 16 at 5 p.m. at which time they’ll go up to $30.